Ready
by LiveinLivingColor
Summary: He knows that ten years from now, he won't remember a lot of things about McKinley High. But he will remember this moment, where everything was ending, but everything was beginning at the same time.


When Finn pulls up to the Fabray's front door that night in September, he feels as though his heart is going to beat out of his chest. Getting the guts to ask Quinn out in the first place had been hard enough, and now he's sitting in his car, tapping his fingers nervously against the steering wheel and wondering what he should do to kill time, since he'd arrived twenty minutes early. _I don't want to look like a stalker!_ he thinks, putting the car in drive and pulling down the street a few houses, so they wouldn't look out the window and see him sitting there.

At McKinley, it was common knowledge that going out with Quinn Fabray made you high school royalty. She was captain of the Cheerios as just a sophomore, and freshman and upperclassmen alike feared the steely, cold glances she could give one second, followed up by a sweet smile and a Celibacy message the next. It wasn't as though Finn needed the popularity boost- he was already headed towards being captain of the football team, and was generally well-liked. He didn't _need_ Quinn to make other people think he was cool, but he had been waiting for her since the day they had met in junior high, and he would have asked her out even if she was the one getting slushied rather than the one watching them being thrown. Admittedly, that part of the "new Quinn" concerned him. Since they'd started high school- more specifically, since she'd joined the ranks of Sue Sylvester, she had been the one calling out insults, the one leaving hate mail on that Rachel girl's myspace page, the one laughing at girls who wore the wrong kind of shirt to school. He tried to look past those things and remember the Quinn he had known before high school came in and corrupted everyone, and as he sat in his car, he realized that was what he was most nervous about: that she really had changed, that she wasn't the girl he had wanted for four years now.

He checks the time- 5:50, an acceptable amount of early, and pulls back up to the house. His hands shake when he rings the doorbell and he finds himself intimidated by Mr. Fabray when he pulls the door open.

"Finn, nice to see you again."

"Mr. Fabray, good to see you too." He replies, trying to remember the things his mom had told him about being polite. He hasn't exactly dated anyone before this, unless dancing with Mercedes Jones once at the seventh grade winter dance counted, and he isn't sure what he's supposed to be say. He sits in the living room with Quinn's father, looking around at the photos and collectibles lining the mantle. Those really bad teen movies are right, he thinks, this had to be the most awkward situation of his life.

None of that matters, though, when he hears the footsteps behind him and turns to see Quinn at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a pale blue top and a skirt that covers much more skin than her Cheerios uniform. Her hair is down and curled rather than pulled into the uptight ponytail she has to wear at school, and he sees no trace of the coldness she held in her eyes during the school day.

"Hi." She says shyly, and he wonders if this is the same girl that had shoved an unsuspecting freshman in the hallway that morning.

"Hi. You look…really pretty."

"Thank you."

They stand in silence for a minute, and he mentally thanks Mrs. Fabray as she tells them they'd better get going if they want to be out with any daylight left. She kisses her father on the cheek and leads Finn out the door, walking beside him and almost bumping into him as he tries to open her car door.

"Oh, I can-"

"It's okay, I've got it."

The first sixty seven seconds of the car ride is in silence. He knows this because he had been counting, waiting for her to say something.

"Finn, I…" She pauses, and when he glances over at her he sees what looks like- was that fear? - in her eyes. "I'm really glad you asked me out."

He breathes a sigh of relief inside and feels lighter as they drive towards the city park, comforted by the fact that the attitude she put on at school was just that- an attitude- and she was still the same girl he'd been staring at years ago.

They spend three hours walking the perimeter of the park, eating ice cream cones ("Don't tell Coach Sylvester, she'll murder me!"), and laughing about all of the embarrassing things that had happened in junior high, like him falling in the pool at Tina's birthday party or Quinn getting a makeover from Kurt that resulted in eyebrow-high glitter eye shadow.

He smiles when he watches her laugh, and she looks…relaxed. All the tension she carried around all day as she handed out insults and pushed through crowds of freshman is gone, and he suddenly feels twelve. He knows she does too, without her having to say it.

"Why did we have to grow up, Finn?" she asks, the sun bouncing off her hair as she leans against the tree trunk they were sitting near.

"I don't know. I really don't know."

He is sure that he has never found her more beautiful than in this moment, hair windswept and dirt across her legs from kneeling next to the tree. When he pulls her hand into his, she doesn't pull away, and he smiles down at her when she rests her head on his shoulder.

Walking her back to her door an hour later, the sun starting to set, he glances around to make sure her father isn't sitting in the window- something that wouldn't have surprised him.

"Thanks for this," she says, "I had a great time."

"Me too. Quinn, I have to tell you…I've been waiting for this for years now."

She looks surprised, and he thinks she lookes twelve again when she whispers, "Me too."

He leans closer to her, because even though her dad _might_ be in the window by now, he really wants to kiss her. He stares at her, trying to silently ask her if this is okay, and then closes the gap, Puck's voice yelling, "Get it, dude!" in his head.

He knows she wants people to believe that she's experienced. Not _too_ experienced, as the Celibacy Club president, but experienced enough to not look like a Lima loser in front of the whole school. But when his lips touch hers, he can _feel_ how nervous she is, and he can feel her heart beating fast enough that he knows, without question, that this is her first kiss. When they pull apart, they're smiling, and when she looks at him, she knows that he's figured it out. She gives him a look- _don't you dare tell anyone this was my first- _and then a genuine smile that she can't keep off her face. She squeezes his hand one last time and walks inside, leaving him on the doorstep.

He smiles the whole way back to his car, and that Monday at school, they hold hands in the hallway. Even though she's back to pushing freshman and throwing slushies, she gives him that twelve-year-old smile when she sees him and he knows that the real Quinn is in there somewhere.

XXX

He's pulling up to the Fabray's house again, only this time, it's two years and a hell of a lot of drama later. He sits in the car for a minute, remembering the year that brought them downhill: Drizzle, that wasn't his but really sort of was. The loss they had at regionals, but the fact that they'd won a lot of things that were more important- like friendship. The smile he had given her while Mr. Shue serenaded them, one that said, _we're not okay, but we're getting there._

Junior year had been a blur- getting into gear to win that year's regionals, taking the ACT, which Artie had prepped him for, trying to figure out what to do with his life. He hadn't seen her much, only at Glee, but they had started talking again, started forgiving.

It was in senior year that they became friends, starting over without any of the romantic aspects of their relationship that had caused all of this. By April he realized that whatever had gone on between them, whatever had pulled them apart before, had put them back together for a reason, and he just couldn't sit here and wait any longer. He realized, thinking back on sophomore year, that they'd never really had a chance. And they owed it to themselves to try again, so he rallied up the rest of Glee- Rachel included, albeit a little bit reluctantly at first- to perform a song for her, finishing with a sign that asked her to prom. Mercedes and Santana found the effort nauseating, Brittany and Tina thought it was adorable, and Puck had only helped because he wanted to ask Rachel, and he figured this would be the best way to start. But none of that mattered to him- the only thing that mattered was that she trusted herself enough to give this a chance, to just give in for a change after two years of trying to resist it.

"I know you don't want to get hurt, and I know you don't want to hurt me. But I think that not doing anything is hurting both of us, isn't it?"

When he rings the doorbell on prom night, Mrs. Fabray pulls him inside, wrapping him in a hug. "She'll be right down," she says, "She's having a hair debacle."

This was not like the night of their first date- any evidence of Mr. Fabray is gone, and after all they'd been through, it was impossible to feel awkward around Quinn's mother anymore. When she walks down the stairs in her sparkly blue gown (any evidence of a debacle gone), his heart beats just a little faster, and for a second, it _does _feel like their first date. This time, though, he isn't surprised by Quinn's soft, slightly shy smile. Her appearance is no longer the opposite of the way she acts in the halls of McKinley, and he no longer worries that she will do a 180 when they get back to school. What does surprise him, as she walks towards him to take her corsage, is that after all of this, after all the pain and betrayal and silence, they had found their way back here, and she still managed to take his breath away.

At the dance, when they enter the ballroom, they immediately search out their friends. He watches as she squeals at Tina and Mercedes' dresses, and he shares eye rolls with Artie and Matt as they stand beside them. They spend all night dancing with the rest of Glee, and they are all surprised when Brittany and even Santana choose to spend the night with them instead of with the Cheerios. He is sure he's in the Twilight Zone as he watches Rachel leading Puck around by the hand as he carries her purse in the other- the boy was _whipped_, he laughs to himself- and is even more surprised when Quinn pulls Rachel into a hug, complimenting her purple dress ("This is something like what I'll wear to the Tonys, Quinn.") and snaps a picture of the two of them together.

The night isn't anything like they'd thought it would be during the start of their sophomore year. They are in the back of the room when prom king and queen are announced, the current head Cheerio and one of the football players, and he and Quinn share a smile because right now, standing in a circle of people that love them for just who they are, they just _don't care_.

As the night winds down, they dance together, a ballad playing on the oversized speaker system. He sings along softly in her ear, and she laughs.

"The last time you sang me a ballad, I got kicked out of my house." She says, and for a second he freezes, wondering if maybe there was too much pain to forget. He glances at her and sees the gleam in her eyes, the smile playing on her lips, and sighs, shaking his head. They can joke about these things now.

"Let's hope this creates a better memory for this scenario, then."

They sway back and forth for a moment, and he takes a deep breath. "Quinn, listen. I know that…we've been through a lot, and I know that we're going to be hundreds of miles away next year, but I really want this to work out and-"

"Not hundreds."

"What?" he pauses, looking down at her, confused.

"Not hundreds of miles."

"Okay, well I don't know what the exact number is, but the point is that-"

"Finn. I'm going to NYU."

"What?" his eyes widen, "Are you serious? But I thought-"

"Ohio State, I know. I thought so too. But I ended up getting more scholarship money from the government than I thought, so we can afford it, and their program is something I just can't pass up. I never thought I'd get in, but apparently having a baby is a pretty kick-ass essay topic. And we'll only be about an hour and a half apart, so we can visit each other on weekends and breaks and stuff…"

Finn is headed to a small school in New Jersey that had offered him a full ride, for music education. In junior year, Quinn had found that Glee gave her more satisfaction than cheerleading ever had, and announced that she wanted to be a journalist, specializing in theatre reviews. Rachel had immediately gone off on a rant about how excited she was, offering to get Quinn front row seats to review her Broadway debut. NYU had been the dream school she'd never thought she would get, allowing her to major in writing while still getting a music minor and performing in the musicals and choirs.

"Oh my God, this is great!" he pulls her into a hug, and he feels her laugh into his shoulder.

"But you know what this means, right?"

He looks at her blankly.

"I'm going to be spending the next four years with Rachel." She smiles, shaking her head. "What am I doing?"

He smiles at her, "But you guys are okay now, right? I mean you're friends."

"Yeah." She nods, "Actually, we might room together, as crazy as that sounds. We've talked about it."

"Wow." He says, "I…I'm really, really proud of you."

She leans her head on his shoulder as they dance, and says, "Who would have thought we'd end up like this two years ago?"

"Not me, that's for sure." He answers, waving to Kurt across the dance floor and smiling as Rachel chatters on at Puck about how they should join a couples' ballroom dancing class. "But I'm glad."

"Me too." She says, lifting her head to look at him, "I actually like who I am when I'm with you, Finn."

She gives him her that smile reserved for him and he kisses her for the first time since sophomore year, feeling like everything was finally going the way it was supposed to.

He knows that ten years from now, he won't remember a lot of things about McKinley high. He won't remember the classes he didn't pay attention to or the millions of football games they'd lost. He will remember some of the bad things, like finding out that Drizzle wasn't his or losing at Regionals. But along with that, he will remember his first date with Quinn, winning Nationals their senior year, Mr. Schuester. He'll remember the friends he'd made in Glee that he might never have looked twice at before. He will remember this moment, where everything was ending, but everything was beginning at the same time.

For the first time since he'd picked a college, he feels that is ready. Ready to get out of Lima, ready to leave all of this behind him. Ready to step into the next part of his life, albeit a little terrified, with Quinn standing beside him just as scared, but just as ready.

He looks at her, and with irrational and clichéd and somehow perfect timing, says, "I love you."

She looks a little shocked and it takes her a few seconds to process, but her lips curve into a smile and he feels twelve again when she says, "I love you, too."


End file.
